From where I sat, the water seemed to be flowing pretty fast. Dark, undulating ripples, blue-black depths. The bruises on my back, shoulders and shins were pretty much the same colour. A solitary tear made its way down my cheek and into my hair. It was not the pain, as much as the self-loathing, that drew bile in my mouth. In an instant, my body was wracked with spasms and I retched. I retched till nothing came out but dry gasps and painful panting. I lay back on the rock I was sitting on. It was bare, polished by the relentless winds and waters that beat upon it for millennia. Nothing could grow on the dark, flat cliff. It gave me much comfort, the smooth coolness of it. I closed my eyes for a second and then jerked them wide open. A vision flashed before me every time I entered the darkness of my mind. Blurred faces, violent thrusts, screaming voices, the sharp tang of blood and fluids. Involuntarily, I scratched myself, drawing blood from my arms. The pain obliterated the sights, sounds and smells for a while. And then, again, I felt it. Rough, calloused fingers probing me, spiked shoe soles holding my feet down, wetness in my mouth, on my face, all over my body. My hips throbbed in the memory of the brutal invasion, and the blood running in shining rivulets down my thighs could have been imagined, had it not been accompanied by the salty smell of rust. I sat up and retched again, this time spitting blood from my parched and burning throat. I couldn't hold it in any longer. I screamed and screamed till my voice gave out. My tears, my pain, my humiliation, my anger fuelled me on. I stood on the precipice looking down at the river flowing beneath. I extended my foot into the void. Moments later, flesh met water. The desecration of my body and soul dissolved in the dark blue depths.

The inky sky was dotted with stars as I turned away from the edge of the cliff. For the first time since I bludgeoned him to death, I surveyed the scene of my devastation. The blood-soaked rock with which I bashed his head in gleamed blackly in the moonlight. A trail of the same blackness led from there to the edge. My toes still tingled from the sponginess of flesh when I kicked his body off it. He had been heavy, but my strength came from what he had robbed me of - my dignity. To think that I was naive enough to believe that he loved me the way I loved him. Moonlight robbed the plateau of colour, except the bruises on my body and soul.

"A lovers' stroll" he'd said, no love did he show
A sweet kiss turned sour, a caress became a blow
My dream was a nightmare, and little did I know
My innocence was foolish, my beauty was a whore
He wanted my body for the night, no more
I trusted the unfaithful, and rewarded I was so
The sky and the water, my body and my soul
Were the colour of my battered love, they were indigo